Governments

Intergovernmental cyber security policy control is key to National Security

The Internet of Things

As the Internet of Things evolves and smart apps and smart devices become increasingly intelligent the potential risks to modern infrastructure increases. With the emergence of Smart Cities, the Man in Middle Attack becomes a significant threat. Communication between smart devices are vulnerable to attack as hackers masquerade their identity to infiltrate networks.

The Scentrics solution prevents this problem.

Scentrics protects against this potential threat as all keys are stored on the secure Scentrics server and not on the smart device itself, thus protecting against attacks of this nature.

Protecting National Security

The world is experiencing a global cyber security crisis and boundaries are being rewritten. Global cyber security costs are estimated at $445 billion per year and, unless steps are taken to address the fast-moving and expanding issues, there is a risk that all of us will end up paying a heavy price.

Espionage and counter espionage seems more prevalent than at any time in the almost three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The US has accused Russia of interfering in its election process in a newly overt and aggressive manner and national security agencies are under almost constant attack from foreign hackers. Companies across all industries continue to suffer serious data breaches; and businesses and citizens are belatedly realising that all of their communications and content can easily be intercepted in transit and in storage.

This issue becomes more acute as governments worldwide increasingly use digital platforms to provide public services in an effort to improve their delivery and efficiency. Citizens will need an electronic identity account that will be with them from the day they are born to the day they die, and digital access will need to be provided to big-city dwellers and small-town farmers alike.

To do this effectively, and take into account the need to manage cross-border and in-country requirements, governments will need to provide centralised and unified key management and identity policy backed by the state.

The only way to mitigate the risks is to plan ahead and put in place robust measures today that can have a major impact tomorrow. Any delay in acting will lead to questions being asked as to why cutting-edge cyber security, the only insurance policy that matters and works, was implemented too late.

The use of encryption is vital to protect information. Governments clearly need a path to access data, in a way that sits within the law, when national security concerns demand it – there can be no such thing as a ‘walled garden’ with technology that nobody can break.
Scentrics’ solution is able to balance these priorities.

Important Feature: Key Escrow

A relevant authority is able to request access to a user’s data through the appropriate legal framework, whereby the judiciary can grant access if it is justified.

This is because the Scentrics architecture allocates keys to individual communications. In a messaging app, for example, every discrete message is secured with its own unique key. As a result, it is possible to target very specific areas of data, such as a message at a certain time on a certain day, and not have to compromise a much larger amount of data.

This service is fully automated and provides granular policy control, ensuring that operators and enterprises fully adhere to legal and regulatory requirements.